Nothing In This World is Strange
by twilightjunkie1313
Summary: They are a series of redrawn lines and unspoken devotion, strength and bitterly denied weakness, humanity linked arm in arm with death's only son. The analysis of a trinity. Kid/Liz/Patty. Rated for violence/language.
1. Chapter 1

Nothing In This World Is Strange:

(Soul Eater Fiction)

…

He heals quickly.

…

They all manage to stumble inside Gallows mansion under their own power, which is a miracle considering the current time and the unexpectedly complicated nature of the mission they only just staggered away from. Liz and Patty are stiff and cold and a hundred other things, but there is not a scratch of either of them. (They still feel drained, unpleasantly worn, their bodies have conducted too much of their mister's energy.)

As tired and frayed as every nerve in their bodies seems to be, they are mentally present enough to realize that their mister did sustain a few injuries. But he brushes off their glances of concern with stern silence and the cold set of his jaw. He is walking and glaring at unsymmetrical things and that is enough of an indicator of sanity and general "okay-ness" for the twin weapons.

Liz is in the mindset for some tea, because that is what they do late at night when they cannot sleep. Or early in the morning before the sun rises and they have just come back from a mission. (Because it will be a cold day in reaper-hell when Kid's father assigns them a mission that doesn't mess with their sleep cycles. )

She knows they will all sleep just fine after this particular mission, but somehow the wind-down seemed like a good idea. She figures, due to his suddenly noticed absence, that their mister is elsewhere. Probably showering the many coats of dust and slick grime off of himself.

The eldest weapon glances about, Patty is perched on a stool, waiting for the water to boil in the tea kettle. Out of reflex and little else Liz looks her sister over, checking for signs that Patti was hurt in the battle. There is nothing visible. Though, Liz notes with an internal sigh, they could both use a bath or a hot shower to loosen up before bed.

Provided Kid does not take all of the hot water.

The kettle squeals bloody murder after a few moments of blank white thought, and before Liz can reach it Patty is there -shutting off the stovetop and putting the kettle on a cool burner. They shuffle about in a sort of battered-post-battle-unison, getting cups and honey and the other things for nighttime tea. In a few minutes the three scalding cups are assembled onto a platter with a few muffins and a few scones.

It is wordlessly decided, another moment of post-battle-unison, that they are going to have this tea with Kid. Which requires the locating of Kid and the transport of tea , and themselves, to his location.

So down the hall and up the stairwell and down another hall and past the symmetrical suits of armor and a set of really strange paintings that look like trees (almost) and they knock on their mister's bedroom door.

Liz picks up on the signs a bit too slowly, the closed door and the lack of instant reply to her knocking… but eventually she understands a few things in quick order. Their mister did not want to be disturbed, she was going to ignore that unspoken request (which is well within her right as his weapon, and his housemate) but she would not subject Kid to Patty. (Because that would be unfair and cruel on some level.)

She pulls the tray from Patty and mutters something about it being late and Patty needing sleep. The youngest pistol isn't stupid, but she doesn't ask questions and she doesn't look back as she pulls her cup off of the tray and shuffles back toward her room. Patty is simply glad that somebody is checking up on their mister, she has no preference as to whom is doing the checking.

Liz knocks again and Kid still doesn't answer. So the eldest sibling coaches a blank expression onto her face and jimmies open the door with her elbow before backing inside the room. Experience tells her that the grim reaper and his only son are completely capable of surprising her (a demon pistol from Brooklyn) which places them in the top 0.04 percentile of the worlds population. The sight of Shinigami-sama gliding out of a mirror and into Gallows mansion's living room would always seem odd to her.

She turns. The young reaper isn't in the room, but he was in the bathroom and he had left the door ajar.

"Kid?" She calls out abnormally loud, not wanting to catch him off guard.

"I am currently in the bathroom, what do you need?"

She pauses a beat, tempted to just lay the tray down and leave the room. Instead she mutters something about having brought him tea. Before her traitor mouth could be silenced by her loyal, yet obviously sleep deprived brain… she finds herself walking to the bathroom door and entering the moment Kid's voice grants her permission to do so.

Damn it all.

She has a mug in each hand, because somehow she found time to put the tray down without even knowing she did so. Her eyes are adjusting to the shift in light and the vision obscuring steam that has formed crawling tendrils out the door of the bathroom. (She notes that she isn't going to take a shower tonight, because between Kid and Patti all of the hot water is gone.)

Liz's then spots the deep pink and red gash curving along her mister's forearm as he reaches for his mug of tea. She doesn't hand it over, instead she places both mugs beside the sink. He thinks nothing of the gash, she can tell. (He makes no move to hide it from her and he doesn't rub at it as if it was sore.) She spots it suddenly, he is moving slower and avoiding her eyes. His gestures and presence feel stiff.

His back is to her and he is buttoning up another of the endless supply of white shirts he owns. This one appears to be made of thinner material, it breaths better and Liz can only assume that this high collar loose cotton weave thing is what he will wear to bed. She is about to turn back and get his mug, seeing only the scratch on his forearm and no other cause for worry or higher levels of specific panic…

But she notices him hesitate slightly as he reaches the buttons over his ribs.

Either his arms or his ribs are badly injured because he shudders before she steps forward and lays a hand on each shoulder (lightly, to avoid harming him.) She exhales and he follows suit, telling her that she can leave his tea centered between the two sinks. His tone is polite dismissal and complete avoidance.

She understands that to him this isn't even that bad, or that perhaps it is slightly bad but not uncommon and therefore not significant. Still, she moves quickly, locating two rolls of gauze and some astringent type liquid from underneath the sinks.

He switches over to a numb autopilot. She feels the difference the moment she touches him. It is odd, the amounts of impassive and blank stoicism that coat him as she orders him to undo the buttons of his shirt. It's already got blooming misshapen patches of red on it, and he nods at a black bin as she takes the shirt from his hands.

She patches him up slowly, the deep gash on his forearm has brothers. One that winds from his bicep and carves a shallow curve around the muscle over his shoulder, another on his other arm that rakes the inside of his elbow before lightening up as it reaches the outside of his lower arm. Those are rinsed out twice each before she applies light wrapping to them. He murmurs that they are defensive wounds. She recalls a few blows from a razor sharp tail that should have been deflected by his weapons… but he had shifted and taken the blows on his skin.

The cut gracing his shoulder goes halfway to bone.

There are more, with each new gash or bloodied marring gouge or deep purple black bruise beaten into his body he would whisper an explanation as she did her best to make him new again. She found new old wounds, things she never recalled him getting in their prior fights and he rattles off dates and explanations with a muted sigh.

It doesn't take her long to understand that while his body heals quickly (he murmurs "last week, the twin kishin" as she trails her eyes over a nearly-healed bruise that shadows his shoulder blades and stretches into the middle of his back.)… he carries the memory much longer.

She is tempted to ask why, because she has seen flickers of his skill set and agility. Her mister is not graceless, he is not weak. All of the blows that landed on his alabaster skin could have been avoided. She could have blocked them. (It was her right to shield him from harm.)

He has been watching her eyes the entire time and he has noticed the shift in her emotions, from obligation, to grim curiosity to this fresh lead-coated guilt.

After a few moments he blinks the dryness from his eyes and sees that she is not in front of him anymore, her hands are no longer manipulating his limbs. She isn't patching up his cuts, she is looking at him. Waiting. With a lurching suddenness he feels tired and heavy and out of touch. A drastic shift from the comfortable numb observance he was wrapped in just a few minutes ago.

How long has she been leaning against the sink sipping her tea and looking at him with enough force to make lesser mortals wince in fear? He runs both hands through his hair and she holds out a clean shirt. She watches him take it lightly from her grip and he can feel a muddled brewery of emotion seeping out of her soul. She still has that lead coated guilt, but now its mixed with more complex things, like possessiveness and fear, anger and the faint smattering of shame.

He keeps trying to narrow down the tenor of her soul's emotions as he turns his back to her and buttons the shirt stiffly. He is negotiating the ones by his collar bone when he senses her soul focus on something specific.

Her voice reaches him not a moment later and disrupts his analysis of her wavelength.

"Why?"

His answer is nearly automatic, partially because he can tell precisely how she is asking the question and partially because he has reasonably and logically thought about this subject for a significant amount of time. He knows this, explaining it to her is easy.

"Because you are human."

He knows she catches the emphasis on the words, the way he made 'human' sound like 'irreplaceable' without implying that they are fragile. She nods at him once before reminding him to drink his tea unless he wants it cold. Then she shows herself out of his space, the last of the steam vanishing with her.

They both understand it at different levels. Theirs is a role reversal for the ages. They have become a trinity, a set of redrawn lines and unspoken devotion. They are each other's everything, despite the convoluted nature of it, or perhaps because of it.

He hears her pad down the hall as he takes a sip of drinkable and blessedly warm tea.

…

Author's note:

Before I posted this I had to do a fair bit of editing, as I have found that I get "wordy" with a story the moment I get comfortable with it… but up until then it is this stiff mess of a plot and dialogue. Still, if you spot any glaring spelling errors let me know. As for comma misuse, I claim artistic license.

This will be a multi-chaptered work.

Lastly, I Do Not Own Soul Eater.


	2. Chapter 2

Nothing in this world is strange.

(Chapter 2. Field Ops.)

…

They left Gallows mansion at ten o' one and approximately forty seven minutes later they find themselves in a rather messy version of hell. Kid is hissing a muted stream of curses in fluent Latin, Japanese, French and some other language Liz cannot place. His left hand is battered, somewhat bloodied and he has locked his right hand around his wrist… a makeshift tourniquet to stem the bleeding.

It is his left wrist actually, the part of him that has sustained the most injury… and while it is his non-dominant hand, he absolutely refuses to wield a gun in the remaining fully functioning hand. (He claims that he cannot use them because he needs one hand to keep steady pressure on the other, something about it being possible to die due to massive blood loss -reaper or not.)

Liz had, at sometime during her mister's elegantly complicated cussing, stepped forward and taken the weapon form of Patty off the cobblestone. In the span of a shallow inhale and half a dozen heartbeats the eldest pistol moved into a stance directly in front of the now kneeling and useless Kid. While the action effectively shields her mister from the creepy-knife-throwing-ex-butcher-kishin, it does very little to shield Kid from Liz. (She is radiating irritation in amounts so high it chokes off his resonance with her.)

She does not take her eyes from their target as she instructs him to get his reaper-bum up this moment and walk it off. She has seen him smirk off deeper cuts than this and she has seen him laugh at gunshots that blast into his shoulders. She has complete faith that this is an easy pain for him to handle. So she is not amused when he sniffs and replies that he cannot walk it off as he does not walk on his hands, though perhaps she would find her advice more applicable if she were in the company of circus performers… as they can, in fact, walk on their hands.

Patty laughs at that…which only angers the kishin, while dually pissing off both Kid and Liz further. Between Patty's giggles Liz keeps her head clear enough to shout an angry order to take cover.

There is a regrettable lack of cover in the middle of the cobblestone street and Liz is forced to kick Kid out of the path of a few well-aimed fillet knives. Kid scrapes a cheek on the stone and despite Liz's best efforts, a knife nicks the top of the young reaper's shoulder.

Kid swears in earnest now, pulling from dead languages, foreign slang terms and an incorporation of four lettered American standards… his suit is ripped and bloodied and that simply will not do. Liz looses a small burst of fire at the butcher-demon before adjusting her stance to shield Kid again. She turns and casts a glance over her shoulder to see if he is dying or simply annoyed.

The moment her head turns and her attention shifts the butcher-demon is ready, throwing an unimaginable amount of cutlery at the eldest pistol. The young reaper is still on the ground, holding his wrist… but he manages to kick his weapon's knees out from under her. Effectively sending her sprawling to the stone street and out of harms way.

Liz screeches for the span of a half second before all of the air is forced from her lungs by a graceless impact with the ground. She lays flat on her back, having avoided all of the cutlery, staring upside-down at the charging figure of the butcher-demon.

Behind her there is the hissed elegance of Kid's assessment of the current situation. It is three syllables and the amount of understatement his polished sarcasm expresses makes her want to beat him to death (Which is impossible.) or laugh at how bored he sounds while in pain.

She is still flat on her back. Blinking the hazy edges from her vision she finds Patty ready, all focus and calm in her head. Patty is waiting… like they have all the time on earth to get one really good shot on too-many-knives-kishin. There is a tugging at her soul and Liz can feel Patty asking her what she plans to do.

Right.

Liz exhales and slides back into reality, where she is still between her mister and the knife-happy-harpie. The ex-butcher-demon is still running directly at them with what looks like and illegally large butcher knife held aloft in a hand. Liz rolls over, taking up a position on her stomach, elbows on the stone, one hand cupped just under the butt of her gun. Her feet are placed shoulder width apart and she thinks she may or may not have kicked Kid in the side of his head when she rolled.

She feels Patty's surreal relaxation mashed up against the reality of the situation. Time doesn't slow for the elder weapon. She breaths out slowly and feels her heartbeat hammer into the street under her.

Eight rounds are fired.

Four go into the same hole in the demon's forehead. One round neatly blows open his left shoulder and another does the same to his right, two rounds unerringly find the middle of his breastbone and sink heavily into his chest cavity. He falls.

Their joint laughter is delayed by one instant. All that fills that space is the echo of the eight rounds and the breathing of a young reaper. Then they are laughing, decompressing and grateful and at ease. The sound isn't perfect, its born of stress and fear and the vacuum left when both vanished suddenly.

Liz rolls somewhat stiffly onto her back and Patty blinks into the form of a bubbly blue eyed girl. Kid sprawls onto his back as well, smirking.

"Your kill shot was from the ground."

The reaper's observation is quiet. A murmur against their new joy.

"Somebody kicked me behind the knees."

There is amusement everywhere in her language, he can all but see the smile on her face.

He doesn't tell her "your welcome" and he doesn't mention that she used eight shots when two would have done the job. Those words would have been redundant. Instead he is first on his feet, sliding his injured arm behind his back and extending his functional hand out to them.

…

Author notes: I do not own Soul Eater.

The italics in the bottom of chapter one really bother me, I am trying to fix them.


	3. Chapter 3

Nothing in this world is strange.

Soul Eater fiction.

(Title: Valuable.)

…

…

The half second the young reaper knew he couldn't bargain or reason or fight a way out for himself and the instant he choose to ensure their safety were one and the same. Those realizations and choices existed in a harmony that lacked the staggered separation of even a few moments.

It was automatic, to wait until the last possible moment and then throw them as far away from himself as he could.

While he had known the odds on him being able to leave with them were slimming by the second… he had learned hope from his human companions. So he stubbornly kept them in his palms until the odds ticked down to none and hope became illogical.

He knew he should have tossed them sooner, keeping them with him was only putting them in the way of needless harm. He scolded himself for it deep inside his mind, even has he felt the identical weight of them on his skin and the similar feel of their soul's pulling him into calm.

He didn't have the focus needed to shield every thought from them, they catch the slick oily residue of his regret and sadness before he quells it down with stable resolve. Patty is quick, diving after the trails of the emotions he wants to keep from them, he feels her questioning him in their resonance link. Liz mirrors her sister's concern, splitting her focus between Kid's soaring pulse and his hesitation to answer Patty.

Its fast, so fast.

He tries to remember every detail. He does his best to compose himself, inhaling deeply and starting to let a slow breath out of his nose. The footsteps he has been listening to stop, two feet to the right and just behind him.

He throws them, just as he hears the man beside him inhale. A face registers in the right edge of his vision. He blocks it out for a moment and watches the glint of sunlight on gunmetal as they clatter across the cobblestones. They are almost twenty feet away when they stop sliding.

The young reaper doesn't register that, he had cut their resonance the moment they left his grasp. The loss of their voices in his head is more pronounced this time, the lack of their soul's brushing into his own triggers a jolt of fear. He is struck stock still by paralysis.

The man ,whose face he doesn't want to register, opens his mouth and a sick smile is flashed at Kid. The mister is staring blankly at the space on the ground in front of his discarded weapons. Its been the span of a few heartbeats, the young reaper can feel his pulse hammering through his own body… but the weapons haven't shifted back.

They are not coming to save him.

He is grateful for this.

Author Note: I do not own Soul Eater.


	4. Chapter 4

Nothing in this world is strange.

(Title: The grimmest fairy tale.)

…

The sky is the color of watered down crimson, it whispers of old world watercolor paintings and the changing of the guard. It is the sort of sky that mourns the passing of kings and proceeds the coming of earth-breaking storms.

Death's sky stays blue despite this. Never has there been a more pristine version of blue.

He watches through the black rimmed mirror as his son drags himself inside the front door of Gallows mansion. Flanking him are two girls, identically clad in grey t-shirts and dark navy jeans. They have the souls of weapons and upon realizing this Death suppresses an amazed smile.

Under any other circumstance it would be automatic to reach for an analogy, to try and liken this occurrence to something he has seen or anything he has heard of before. It is comforting to draw correlations, to compare the things in his long existence to things that mortal humans go through.

His mind stumbles a bit before he decides that, yes… this is just like a boy bringing home two rain soaked hellhounds (or did typical children bring home tamer creatures? He didn't know.) and asking for their asylum. Still, Death has never classed his son as normal, nor has anyone else who's met the young reaper.

He shoves the analogy away, it is unsuitable, after all. His eyes stay fixed to the glossy image. He notes, not for the first time, that the image stays dull due to the chosen color palate of Gallows mansion and the dim quality of the light at this late hour.

He could fix the quality of the image easily, by going to the residence instead of just observing. He stretches out his senses, letting the feel of every soul in the city brush against his before he snaps his attention to the three of them. He will not just wander into this.

He feels the interwoven and contrasting play between the two girls souls, the familiar tenor of his son's soul… and he decides that they will need space. They lack the harmony that is so automatic in technicians and their weapons.

Without realizing it he had turned away from the mirror. He shakes himself slightly and wanders back to the tall glossy shine of it, eyes lightly dusting across the sight in the frame.

They are in the black and white of Gallows kitchen, he spots the double oven in the background. The blue eyed siblings are quiet and Kid is pushing two plates in their direction. Sandwiches. Death notes that Kid vanishes from view quickly, probably off to go get the siblings something to drink.

The reaper shuts his eyes and prods over the souls of the two siblings. They were unique. Their attachment seemed organic, seamless in its nature. They felt strong for humans, so much so that the reaper let loose a slight laugh. The three of them would be perfect, in time.

He had thought, at first glance, that his son was making an error in judgment. That was scrubbed from his mind now. The young reaper hadn't made a mistake at all. This was not an action born of childish things, this wasn't soggy puppies or lost hellhounds and a whining plea to keep them.

The young reaper had understood, in a way his father was only beginning to grasp, that the two blue eyed sisters were perfect.

The smile that Death had been holding back cracked across his face. The analogy he had been looking for settled on him.

The reaper cast a last glance at the mirror.

This was Arthur, the quiet boy who would be king… and he'd brought his weapons home.

…

Author's note: I don't own this.


	5. Chapter 5

Nothing in this world is strange.

(Title: Priceless.)

…

…

He is gone.

Liz doesn't register it for a few half-seconds. Her soul falls into resonance with Patty after a moment of complete disorder and the eldest sibling stares numb at the spot where Kidd vanished.

Understanding reaches her in stages, the feeling is similar to having your head pushed beneath ice-cold water and held down. She is gasping for air and trying to right herself and picking out details and screwing her eyes shut while trying to hold them open.

Patty is screaming at her to fire as many rounds as physically possible into the man before them.

Liz doesn't really recall blinking back into human form, she knows she must have because she is kneeling on the cobblestone and holding a gun to the man that is crouched where Kidd was only moments ago. The man is responsible for Kidd vanishing. Liz can hear her voice, it is steel and glass and she never remembered opening her mouth… but she is threatening the man as Patty cries for their reaper and technician.

The eldest sibling notes that her vision is blurring up and she repeats Kidd's name over and over in her mind. Patty's words don't register anymore, its just sound and the bright sparking of raw loss and fearful anger jolting across their link.

The man doesn't flinch as Liz tells him to give their technician back. Instead he gives her a smile that suggests he is humoring her somehow. Only this is nowhere close to funny. The world tilts beneath Liz as the man rises and promises to spare her.

Patty notes that the man is unarmed and urges Liz to put a tidy set of eight bullets between his eyes. They could kill him. They could get Kidd back right now if this man dies, Patty thinks. Liz is choking on the concept.

The link between Patty and the eldest weapon strains itself. Liz is all confusion and disoriented numbness while Patty is focused rage and molten possessiveness. The emotions clatter and shutter-snap between them. Liz's blurry eyes spill over and she removes one hand from the gun in her grip to wipe roughly at her face.

She cannot kill the man.

He is standing, looking at her with a sort of pitiful admiration, she registers that he is calling her pretty, beautiful even. She wants to bring her technician back. She feels shaky and numb and off balance without the young reaper's soul in harmony with hers.

Her finger slides off the trigger and the man is walking away. His shadow slides out of sight before Liz lowers the gun. She cannot kill the man. Patty is murmuring a stream of curses about how Liz is weak.

Briefly there is a silence between them.

The world shifts underneath Liz's feet as Patty gives a quiet series of instructions. The youngest sibling is forming a strategy, because they need to get out of this hellhole and find back-up and go after Kidd. Liz's mind is forming images of the death room, internally she grimaces at the thought of telling Death that his son is gone.

The world spins backwards for a moment and Liz finally has the strength to pull herself to her feet. She is stoic but she can feel the gears of her thoughts whirling back into capacity.

They are two thirds of something and Liz is taking off at a light sprint to get the hell out of there. Somewhere inside herself Patty is just beginning to recognize the loss.

The sound of gunfire is absent from the battle field. The siblings notice this in unison, though it is Liz who hones in on the other sounds. The ones that crack and sing around the stone of their location. The tang of blades and the zing-y low tenor of lightning is present, there is the yelling of other technicians… indistinct and muted.

They are hand in hand as they run, Patty taking the lead because she is the faster of the two. Liz cannot remember the last time she held Patty's hand. A tug on her forearm and her younger sister's hand scrabbling at her waist. Liz is thrown to the ground by the younger pistol.

There is the ear shattering scream of high pitched sound, the rumble of a concussion wave and then dust and small rock fragments. They are pushed up against a column of stone and Liz cannot really get a hold of anything. Her mind is switching between the present and the past again.

Patty's face is right in front of her own, suddenly, her little sister's mouth moving soundlessly. It takes the eldest pistol three seconds too long to understand that Patty is holding her face between her hands. Her sibling is afraid, the pressing of Patty's soul up against her own is a call for resonance. Patty's finger tangle into Liz's hair.

There is clarity for one moment.

They resonate. Patty's soul forcing Liz into a calm that feels more numb than serene. They are exchanging a million words and pushing back a lifetime of memories. Patty is asking if she is okay, wondering if one of them should go into weapon form, listening for signs of someone getting too close.

Liz is running a hand through her ratted hair, shaking her head and getting to her feet as Patty stands and squeezes her hand a bit too hard. Inside their resonance the oldest pistol is counting her breaths and murmuring that they can do this.

Clarity vanishes.

They are running, shoes finding grip on the stone and grass as they round a corner and meet a serpentine demon. There is a half second before the creature turns it's head and fixes them in a pair of cold green eyes.

Without hesitation Liz is blinking into weapon form, her body folding into steel and perfect metal as her soul compresses and expands. Patty is taking a stance that Liz knows well. Patty's palm is warm, steady and all composure as her opposite hand slams under the base of the gun for support. The youngest sister is shoulder muscles and coiled battle stance, searing her wavelength into the gun.

Fifteen shots are fired in under four seconds. The snake demon falls dead as Patty whispers something about them needing to stay focused and keep moving.

Liz is blinking out of weapon form and reaching for Patty's hand. They are sprinting away from the snake's downed corpse. It is quiet in their resonance until Liz focuses on a specific sound. Matching Patty's heartbeat is an oath, whispered like a mantra. It has woven itself around all the images and memories and shreds of Kidd's voice that float inside their link.

It goes back, Liz notes as she tugs at the grey and steel colored twine of the words, they are spider silk and smoke. The oath was sworn the moment he left them. Repeated every heartbeat since.

We will get him back.

It is burned into their blood, repeated a hundred thousand times already.

We will get him back.

Liz feels her soul reach for the connection that would complete their resonance. The soul of death's only son.

We will get him back.

…


	6. Chapter 6

Nothing in this World is Strange.

(Soul Eater.)

Author note: I do not own.

…

…

They are quietly walking down the hall. It is nearly three in the morning and the eldest pistol knows they should be asleep, resting up for classes the next day. She simply cannot bring herself to care.

Kidd is still in his suit jacket and dress pants, somehow silently leading the way to Patty's room in perfectly shined Italian black leather shoes. Liz had, after eyeing her Technician's wrinkle free attire, decided to put on a pair of jeans and tug on some sneakers.

They do not bother to knock on Patty's door, Liz simply walks a few steps inside the darkened room and waits patiently as Kidd puts a hand on each of her younger sister's shoulders. The young reaper is gentle as he shakes Patty into wakefulness, murmuring that everything is alright. Liz catches the way their technician also slides a few whispered good mornings into his words to Patty.

The moment Patty demonstrates alertness Kidd steps back from the bed and shoots Liz a look that is part nod and part question. Rarely do they wake up in the middle of the night for non-emergencies. The protocol on this situation is a vast grey area. Liz clears her throat and walks to the closet, pulling out a pair of pants that match the ones she is currently wearing and throwing them onto the bed for Patty.

She pauses for a moment before picking out matching sneakers and catches Kidd smirking back a laugh at her sluggishness. He is pressing socks into Patty's hands seconds after she finishes buttoning her jeans.

Once they are headed downstairs, it occurs to the eldest pistol that Kidd has not yet explained this early-morning-late-night venture. Patty apparently feels the same way, because the shorter blonde turns mid-step to face Kidd and Liz, her nose wrinkling curiously. It is the precursor to a question. Patty's mouth opens a fraction before she eyes Kidd over once and presses her lips together mutely.

They pause, identical blonde haired and blue eyed, motionless at the entry way to Gallows mansion. The reaper brushes by them, a pallid palm reaching for the door handle. There is the faint sound of mechanisms clattering and sliding into place. Liz recognizes this as the door unlocking and stares vacantly at her technician before remembering that Kidd has never carried a house key. He is pulling the tall, thin door open quietly and ushering them trough with a blank look.

Outside the walls of Gallows mansion the city looks angular and shadowy in the poor light. It is dark, and while the young reaper is having no trouble navigating the eight very slight steps that stretch from the front door to well down the front walk… the two siblings are half blind.

Kidd doesn't even make it to the end of the walk before he stops and holds a palm out at shoulder height.

Abruptly Liz understands the way he looks over his shoulder at the two of them. His face is cleanly blank, eyes hollowed out and shadowed in a way that is made worse by the lights from inside Gallows mansion. This is not her calm technician, this version was uneasy, anxious even.

The light that manifests from his palm doesn't hurt the eldest gun's eyes. She is squinting in sudden awareness at the way Kidd's features look like they are translucent skin over whiter bone. Patty is awake and alert all at once, standing next to Liz as Kidd summons his skateboard.

The young reaper is on the board in a graceful movement, tilting a hip downward slightly and bending his knees just a fraction as he turns the board an easy half-circle. The board has risen slightly higher from the ground, now hovering a good two feet in the air. Kidd is blinking owlishly at his weapons, waiting for them with his palms open and empty.

Liz steps forward and murmurs for soul resonance. She is about to slide into gun form, a bright aura of light flickering from her skin when she hears the nearly silent voice of her technician wind across their link.

No, he says. Even though it is hardly a whisper above the steady multi-level harmonic hum of his soul she freezes like he has ordered her to shoot him. There is a blush of confusion in her soul that serves as an orange tinted reply. She does not understand.

Patty gets it. The shorter blonde flashing a smile at Kidd before jaunting forward and taking his hand, jumping onto the board with surprisingly sure footing. Patty is shifting her stance, bending her knees a bit as Kidd grasps her shoulders and moves her a few inches closer to himself. Liz watches this for a moment, wondering how on earth they could balance on the board without falling.

The eldest pistol catches the quick glance that Kidd throws her way. He presses into their resonance link and suddenly she feels the instinct to shift slightly right, then tilt her weight back just a bit.

Like this, her technician's voice is calmly filling her mind, like when we fight in harmony. He is telling her that they have done more difficult things in unison. She nods, because his logic is sound. Patty is a bright yellow hum of calm within both their minds, unobtrusive but present.

Liz is clamoring onto the board and hooking her thumbs under Kidd's belt. There is a shifting both beneath them and somewhere in Liz's stomach. They are higher up, clearing the treetops by a few feet and slowly making their way above intersections and streetlamps.

In the forefront of Patty's mind sits the unpolished wondering of where Kidd intends to steer them. Liz plucks at the question and draws it forward, ignoring the lurching in her intestines as they rise higher into the night sky.

There is the flicker of a few images, a smattering of memories that the young reaper tugs forward and pushes in front of them. He is talking again, within the quiet of their balanced linking. Explaining that they had taken him into the dessert once.

Both siblings remember well enough, but Kidd is still holding the images out in his mind for them to examine. They had taken him into the dessert one day, telling him from within the open confines of their resonance that he should fly until he passed the city limits. He followed their instruction and they finally told him to slow to a stop when there was nothing but tan and peach colored sand from horizon to horizon.

Each sibling carries memories from that first adventure into the dry endless space of Nevada heat. There were a few times they had been into the dessert since then, but none had been for pleasure. Kidd's memories are like detailed photos and snippets of sound and warmth spreading across skin.

He does not show them images from his solitary adventures into the flat sandy landscape. Liz still tunes into the familiarity and attachment that their technician ties to this environment. She can, if she reaches for the strands of soul perception her technician has woven into his being, feel the hum of Lord Death's soul in the distance.

He has accelerated and the board is higher off the ground than either sibling remembers. They are going fast and Patty spreads her arms wide, blonde hair fluttering in chunky strands as the wind pulls it.

Kidd smiles a little, his soul easing back into balance and clicking into proper place against Liz's. The imperfection in their resonance rate wasn't something she caught until he corrected it. He laughs inwardly and the eldest pistol feels as if she has missed something obvious.

She has been missing something rather apparent, Kidd states calmly.

Her soul blurs into orange confusion again before he fills in the silence between them all.

He says it slowly, explaining that he was never out of resonance with them… but he had fallen out of resonance with himself. His soul was unstable. He was looking for a way to fix it, realign it. He pushes forward images of them in battle and them wandering around the city. There are hundreds of moments that stack one on top of another until they scatter and fill the space inside their resonance like photos hanging in a developing room.

Kidd is turning the board in a wide arching circle and taking it higher still into the sky. There is a moment of stunned silence as Liz looks over the hundreds of thousands of photographs, each perfectly rendered with razor clarity.

Her technician's voice is sweeping lightly into the space within their resonance link, fluttering the photos. He is telling them, in a dozen different languages, that he could not fix his soul alone.

…


	7. Chapter 7

Nothing In This World Is Strange.

(Title: Never let you down.)

Author Note: I do not own Soul Eater.

…

…

Ten hours ago Spirit was all polite duty, eyeing over the three matching backpacks they had strapped to their backs. The red-haired weapon had wished them well and sent them on their way. It had felt colder than previous interactions with the death scythe, in Kidd's opinion. The young reaper did not voice the fact that he would rather Maka and Soul be present to see them off. The edge in Liz's body language told him that she felt the same way.

Patty, as usual, was enthusiastic enough to ease all the tension out of their departure. The blonde was all motion and wide-eyed glee. In the wake of the youngest sibling's bright energy the other two had taken their seats inside the small skull emblazoned plane.

Liz shucked off her backpack and left it in a heap opposite her, instantly settling in to try and catch whatever sleep she could. Kidd eyed the window as the plane heavily took off, the lurching in his stomach as the aircraft climbed to altitude and banked to get on course unsettled him.

…

They had found their mark on accident.

They had days worth of compiled intelligence that placed the witch thirty two miles from their position, her foothold was somewhere in a completely inaccessible portion of India's forested region. They had calmly set out for a trek straight east after checking in with Lord Death shortly after the plane set down.

…

Kidd had, out of a sense of thoroughness, thrown his soul perception open and left it humming along their spider-silk-thin resonance link. It was this and this alone that gave them warning, helped level the playing field and caused Patricia Thompson to shudder.

…

The blonde froze mid-stride, eyes dilating as she grasped her elder sister's wrist and swore. Liz, who could feel the panic of her sibling through their link and tone of her voice, shifted into the heavy metal of her gun form and settled into the palm of Patty's hand.

The younger weapon had taken a battle stance, eyes fixated on a section of trees and thick underbrush as Kidd forced his Soul Perception to focus, pushing their joint awareness wider before contracting it down again.

It was then that the witch appeared, a mess of thin leather colored skin coated with dust and streaks of mud. She looked wiry in build, her hair was windblown and matted and fire red, full of leaves and small twigs. Kidd's eyes could easily pick out this much as she broke through the trees sixty feet in front of them.

She was fast.

Patty neatly fired a set of eight shots at her as she took off into a dead sprint for them. The bullets missed their mark, rare for the pistol siblings. Liz is confused for a moment, sure of her aim and surer of Patty's. Their mark should have fallen, one shot from their barrels could kill any normal human.

The young reaper is in motion now, closing the three feet of space between himself and his weapons in a quick stride. His voice clicks into their resonance link with two words and the sisters both rest in his palms a moment later.

This is not fast enough.

Kidd is closing off parts off their link, separating his mind from theirs enough to give him room to think clearly. All the while he binds his soul tighter to theirs and feels the tight steel and fire-ice sensation, a completing wholeness that comes only with resonance.

Liz is asking why the shots didn't land on their mark, when the witch is upon them, throwing a sharp punch at Kidd's ribs the reaper can only just avoid.

Patty supplies the answer as their technician spins around to place a barrel on the temple of the witch.

She is fast.

The witch ducks out of the barrel's reach and in a blurry instant is ten feet to Kidd's right. Her arm pulls back and her fingers spread wide before she pushes her hand forward and a cruel grimace breaks across her face. Somewhere in their link Patty is registering that they need a more defensible position as Liz feels Kidd pulling open his soul to that its diameter is miles. A fast heartbeat later Liz feels their technician forcing his soul tightly inward so that it surrounds them like a tangible thing, she understands that this is his shield belatedly.

The witches motion is force, raw and bitter and enviable. She puts magic behind it, there is sound that shreds at Liz's eardrums as leaves and twigs and small pebbles become metal coated and rise from the forest floor. They hover in the air for a minute, almost liquid in their polished stillness.

Inside their resonance the siblings pick up a tint of Kidd's thoughts and a fraction of his interest in this opponent's skill set. She is proving to be more than expected. Especially when the floating debris stop hovering and proceed to come at the trio with the relative force of a round exiting a semi-automatic.

It is Patty who fills the blank quiet of their resonance with the a humorless observation. The frost coated voice of their technician is right inside their minds, a calming stereo effect that reaches into their souls. Kidd is pulling at threads of power connected to the darker places inside himself, closing off his mind to the pistols and gritting his teeth against the hail of impromptu bullets.

None of the metal coated debris pieces find their mark. They stay stuck in the layers of Kidd's soul shield, until he expands it a fraction and they fall like dust to the earth. The witch is right there, undeterred, reaching for Kidd's throat as he pulls down the shield and dodges.

They are a dance, a collection of motion and counter-action. They are speeding up when a screeching cry escapes the throat of the earth-witch that threatens to split the very sky in two. The witch is frozen for a second to long as she screams and the young reaper wheels around quickly, landing the butt of Liz's gun form squarely on the witch's ribs.

There is force behind the blow, the witch is a tangle of limbs and anger and red-fire hair as she is sent seven feet backwards into the trunk of the closest tree. Kidd is there as she begins to stand, leveling out the sights of both weapons as the witch casts her gold-green eyes behind the young reaper and to his left.

He moves backwards and to the right, raising soul shield just as something solid connects with the ground where he had stood.

It is a tree, sharpened somehow into a point and missing its roots. It explodes into splinters and branches and knots of wood when it slams into the ground. The shards and pieces are compressing and getting liquid-y again, coating themselves in metal mid-flight as they direct themselves at Kidd.

Their technician is expanding soul shield, as Liz and Patty loose a few rounds toward the demonic-nature-sprite-witch. She is gone before the bullets reach her position, already summoning more stones and branches and leaves into shrapnel and sending it hurling at Kidd.

It is quiet inside their resonance link when Liz focused her soul and her anger into a fine point. She is gritting her teeth and bearing a proud smirk, every inch the hell raising defiant that made her infamous in another lifetime.

The young reaper is trying to get close enough to the witch to land a shot that cannot miss, all the while pushing soul shield between the three of them and the bits of shinigami-only-knows-what that seems hell-bent on shredding them into bloodied confetti. He has been clinical, logical and unshakably calm about the entire fight up to now.

Patty is right there, watching their technician give chase and defend against an opponent that needs to be defeated. She is opening up her own rage and fierce protectiveness. Her sense of duty and loyalty to both Kidd and her position as a death scythe allow her to focus her soul.

Together the sisters turn identical pairs of blue eyes upon their technician. Inside their link they narrow the world down to absolute silence and total peace. The young reaper focuses on them inside their resonance, in the world outside their trinity he is shooting and running after the witches fleeing back.

In unison that harmonizes and clashes, they tell him a single word.

Fight.

The young reaper feels all the words underneath and inside that single one. It is an order and a request, a wish and prayer both. They are his weapons and they stand behind, beside and before him. They always have. He smirks, easing into the world outside their unison souls. They are the best he could ever hope for.

He pulls down Soul Shield, re-directing the energy into the pistols in his hands, feeling them warm and click and shift into cannons. His soul perception is wide open now, all the tension gone from his body.

The witch turns and runs back at the young reaper, another shrill wail cutting through the sky. Both her hands are tense, fingers wide as she steadies her course and keeps coming at them. Kidd hesitates, Liz and Patty are falling out of cannon form and settling into heavy pistols as he tries to pull up Soul Shield to deflect whatever is coming.

The witch is fast. She is jumping into the air as Kidd stands in place, both barrels fixed on her as she launches. The gunfire screams inside their link, one hundred and twenty eight shots fired in the span of four seconds.

The world tilts on its axis and goes dark, their resonance link shudders and Kidd is blindly trying to throw up as many walls between his mind and his weapons as he can, but they still register the pain that comes in flashes as bright white and faded yellow. It lights up their dark world for a moment.

Somewhere, dull and muffled inside their link, Kidd's voice is telling them to hold very still for a minute. To this instruction the eldest weapon panics and the young reaper only just contains his internal scream of agony as he repeats that they all need to hold very still.

Ten point seven three seconds pass and Kidd is forcing them out of resonance and gasping for air as the walls he hastily assembled between their minds and his own fracture and fall as the link fades.

Liz and Patty stand in place, back to back and frozen the moment they take human form.

For a short period of time Liz is positive the world has gone to completely up in flames, or that it was being torn apart and turned around and smashed into small pieces. For fifty feet in any direction the trees are uprooted and laying like huge spilled matchsticks. They have all been sharpened to points, missing their roots and seemed to fall from mid-air. Each of them were pointed at a spot not six feet from where the sisters now stood.

The place where Kidd lay.

Patty is blinking back into gun form as soon as they lay eyes on their technician, Liz's stance is all angles and fierce anger. They are over the body of their technician, Liz's eyes scanning the untouched brush and woods at the rim of their own personal circle of hell.

It does not register to either of them that Kidd is smirking, his face is too covered with blood and dirt to reveal such things. They are too absorbed in his many wounds to notice the body of the red-haired witch five yards away. All one hundred and twenty eight shots found their mark, the witch lies dead and presents no threat to them.

Their mission is complete.

They do not touch the young reaper, even after Patty blinks back out of weapon form. He hasn't breathed in at least three minutes, bloodied, still bleeding through most of his numerous wounds, they stand over him in total shock.

Liz feels his soul tug at hers, a request for resonance. She grasps Patty's hand and together they gently link with their technician.

His memories hit them before the link has the chance to stabilize, the witch had known somehow that she would lose. She had wanted to take them down with her. He is proud when he reminds them that they are nearly unbreakable in weapon form, satisfied in the knowledge that they would not be harmed so easily.

In other parts of his mind he is listing off the various injuries he had suffered when the witch's makeshift bullets found their mark. Liz hears his voice as he does this, the words woven underneath their link. Patty is asking Kidd if he can stand, if he is stable enough for transport.

He knows he is not. He tugs at the steel connections between their souls, stands like webbing that carry energy between them. He is asking for their forgiveness, because he needs to ask for their strength.

The two siblings are the Brooklyn pistols again, pride and fury and strength. Kidd is forcibly reminded that they are incredible as they are. That without him, they are still every ounce as strong , every bit as perfect.

They push energy into him, equally and evenly. He shudders as his lungs pull in air, blue electric crackling over his frame as the magic borne of his father sews him back together. It is a jagged and white-black highlighted electricity, and is hisses quietly in a metallic way as it runs over his body.

They watch as he is healed, aware of the fragments of bone knitting back into place, the veins that re-connect, the blood that becomes absorbed again and the fresh healing skin that seamlessly covers it all. It takes minutes for Kidd's ribs to place themselves where they rightfully belong. Kidd is biting down on his lip, nearly biting through it as his hands clench and his spine bends to the pain of himself becoming whole.

He fights back the screams that choke up his throat. Because he knows that Liz and Patty can feel some measure of this, he refuses to further distress them by giving his agony voice.

Later, after they pull their technician into his shaking legs they raise their resonance rate. He tries, between wincing as he places weight on newly mended bones and muscle, to tell them that he has the energy to get them home.

They shush him with a pair of soft glares. They are intelligent enough to see past his weak lie and they channel strength into him the same way they focus his rage in battle. It is from sensibility and protectiveness of their technician that Liz scoops up the young reaper's frame long before he passes out.

He sleeps on the eldest pistols back, her warmth seeping into his ribcage and arms as she carries him. It is in silence that the weapons sisters walk through the trees, westward, toward home.


	8. Chapter 8

Nothing In This World Is Strange.

(Title: Cobalt and White.)

Author's note: I do not own this. (Also, I refer to Liz and Patty as "twin guns" not because they are the same age, but because they look identical in weapon form.)

…

…

Kidd is looking over his reflection in the mirror above his bathroom sinks when she enters the room. He can hear the mechanisms inside the bedroom doorknob click as she turns it. Even the slight grind of the metal hinges reach his ears. Had he been completely human these sounds may not have registered to him.

Identical pale hands rake through black and white hair before he rests them, palms flat on the black countertop. The young reaper inhales once.

"You should have knocked first."

He has closed his eyes, tilted his head downwards. His shoulder blades pull the fabric of his suit jacket tight across his back. He doesn't need to see her to know she is grimacing at his observation of decorum.

The eldest weapon pauses at the threshold of the technician's bathroom. Cobalt eyes scan over the young reaper's frame. Her hands move to her hips and her fingertips tap the sides of her jeans before she stuffs her hands absently into her pockets.

"Why didn't you defend yourself?"

Kidd doesn't wince at the accusation in her voice. He holds still and waits, because she needs to have this conversation and he needs to hear it. There is a pause, then the heels of her boots on the white tile of the bathroom.

"You…"

Kidd is aware that should he open up his soul perception her emotions would likely bring him to his knees. He can all but feel her fear and anger coiling up inside his own stomach.

"You are more than capable, as a technician and a shinigami."

Her voice has managed to stay even, Kidd wonders if it is an act of mercy or cruelty. It makes it so much easier to hear her, to focus on what she is saying.

"Why didn't you defend yourself?"

Kidd's left foot slides out just behind his right one, his torso dropping slightly lower. Liz observes his shoulder blades rise higher beneath the lines of Kidd's suit jacket. He stays quiet, eyes closed and head bowed.

Kidd hears the quick clicking of her shoes, the coiling in his stomach becomes ice in his blood. He thinks, for one deranged moment, that she is leaving.

He inhales as the hair on the back of his neck stands upright, the young reaper's shoulders tensing just as Liz's hands fix them in a tight grip. She catches the reflection of Kidd's face in the mirror as she pulls him backwards across the floor. His eyes are wide and dull, his face is blank and resigned, empty of fear or self preservation.

He says nothing as he staggers, trying to keep his feet beneath himself. The eldest pistol is side stepping around him, one had closing on the front of his jacket and the other pushing his shoulder back. Her eyes are fixated on a space left of the young reaper's ear. There is a sharp crack as Kidd's head smacks into a white tiled wall. The sound is followed by Kidd's loud exhale.

There is a moment of electric rimmed anger that soaks into the silence between them. Liz notices that he still isn't looking at her. She fixes cobalt eyes on the dull liquid gold of her technician's and finds him fixated upon the ceiling. The grip on his shoulder tightens up and she tugs his whole body forward only to shove him back again. The dull look in his eyes stays.

"Tell me, why didn't you protect yourself?"

Her voice does not stay as even as before.

He knows he cannot avoid her, not when she is so adamant in her demanding for an explanation.

Kidd lowers his gaze from the ceiling to rest on the cobalt blue of his eldest pistol. Liz, in turn, slackens her hold on his front, dropping her hand from his shoulder altogether.

"Tell me why you didn't defend yourself."

The young reaper can hear the steel and even tempered fear in her voice. He keeps looking at her, nearly boring a hole straight through her with the intensity of his focus.

"It doesn't matter."

His voice is calm, quiet.

Liz growls slightly, the skin around her nose wrinkling up and her teeth flashing for just a moment.

"So you would have just let him."

Kidd blinks once.

"I could have killed him."

"He was some pathetic little-!"

"Elizabeth."

She falls quiet as his eyes fixate on the ceiling again. He inhales slowly before looking at her again.

"Human."

He murmurs the word.

"He was human and I could have killed him."

Kidd recalls the moment that Liz had broken through the crowd of students observing the small novice technician as he cussed Kidd out. The technician had already landed a few solid blows to Kidd's ribs and one grazing hit to his face.

The eldest twin gun had grabbed the younger technician by the shoulder and pulled him off Kidd, spinning the boy around to face her and leveling the pistol form of Patty at his heart.

"I could have killed him."

He already knows she is capable of such a thing. Kidd doesn't smirk, his face stays blank as Liz steps back.

"Unlikely. Patty would have tempered the shots."

Liz is arching a brow at the young reaper.

"I had a gun to his chest and you are worried that you could have killed him?"

Kidd nods.

"Yes."

The eldest pistol looks around the bathroom before raking a hand through her hair.

"You didn't even touch him Kidd. Maka would never just-"

"He wasn't fighting Maka."

"No, he wasn't fighting anyone. He was hitting you."

"Liz, please."

"You didn't even block him Kidd."

"Elizabeth."

"How long would you have liked us to wait?"

"You do not understand."

"Until he broke all of your ribs? Until he cut you open and let you bleed out on the hallway floor?"

"It doesn't matter."

The eldest pistol is silent, standing in the middle of the bathroom floor as the young reaper casts a lifeless stare into the mirror behind her. He still looks refined, every inch death's only son despite the black eye that has spread across his cheekbone and the cut on his lower lip.

She relents, deciding to let this particular break in Kidd's morality code slide for the moment. Liz hasn't gotten a good look at him and feels the slightest pang of concern that the bratty-bastard of a young technician had given Kidd more than a black eye.

He hears her let out a sigh before taking a step closer to him.

"Come here."

He steps back, instinctively.

"Kidd."

She is frozen in place, one foot behind the other and an arm halfway through the act of reaching for him.

"Kidd."

He blinks slowly before closing his eyes.

"I am not mad."

"I am aware."

Another click, she has put her arm down, slid her foot forward and is staring at the young reaper with fierce intensity.

The young reaper waits, aware that there are half a dozen questions bubbling inside of the eldest weapon. Liz is eyeing him over carefully, trying to find the proper words to snap him out of his sudden instability. Logically defensive she can understand, but this newly impassive fall from normalcy is most surely not the Kidd she knows.

She changes tactics.

"Kidd, what is wrong?"

His head bows again and he winces ever so slightly -but she catches it.

"Tell me."

A series of quick clicking sounds fill the room and suddenly the young reaper is panicking at the idea of her getting closer.

"Liz don't."

His frame is shrinking into a crouch, trying to vanish into the white wall behind him.

"Kidd."

Elizabeth stops mid-step, her arms dropping to her side as her skin tingles. There is a low hum of electricity in the air and Kidd's eyes are open, blankly fixed on the floor between them as his hands brace against the wall.

The room is getting brighter, the humming electric sound is nearly a tangible thing, vibrating inside the marrow of her bones and she watches with wide open eyes as Kidd's face becomes a mix of stoicism and unrestrained fear. She can see the outline of skull insignia on the floor, a bright blue white plasma of energy. The edges of the insignia blur upwards and the room is sparking with excess energy, bolts of it jumping across the walls and the surfaces of the counter, licking up the mirror's edges and scuttling along every available surface.

The young reaper's grip on the wall is white knuckled as he tries to keep a hold of the excessive amounts of energy trying to course through him. Liz is staring at him, cemented to the floor as the familiar surreal black phantoms of energy begin to string themselves together, snapping at the air with their snakelike forms.

The young reaper pulls in a ragged lungful of air.

"Kidd."

It is a whisper against the chaos, but he hears it and fixes liquid gold eyes on her.

"Kidd."

Her voice is forced calm and he grimaces at the sight of the uncertainty just behind her eyes.

Eighty four one hundredths of a second pass, a short lifetime in the eldest weapon's perspective and Death the Kid screams.

The young reaper is staggering forward as the room becomes impossibly bright, Liz feels a stinging in her retinas as Kidd's arm encircles her stomach and she finds herself unable to move. The young reaper has his other arm extended, palm pointed at the floor. There is a slight ripple of air that pushes outward from them, a small shockwave. Liz has her forearm pressed against her eyes, and feels Kidd inhale quickly as his arm tightens around her.

Kidd clenches his jaw as a shudder runs up his spine and forces his head to tilt upward, he can feel the blue-white sparks running over his skin and jolting inside his system. His open palm is itching for the weight of Patty even as his brain replays every memory he has ever had layering them together with the death of every person that has ever lived.

He feels the energy leave him a moment before it actually does, it gives him enough time to pull Liz against his collarbone and flatten her body against his ribs, his arms twining across her back tightly.

The energy is breathtaking in magnitude.

It drains from him in a rush and expands outward like a nova, radically expanding as it moves further away. It is destructive, disassembling everything, taking the doors off hinges and carving fractures into the mirror and the bathroom tile, leaving pieces and fragments of objects hovering mid-air. It is constructive, re-assembling everything just moments after it had been reduced to its basic parts. It is balanced. Electric blue sparks crackle over the fractures in tile, the breaks in the mirror. In it's wake the room is in perfect repair.

Kidd stands on unstable legs as the energy slows its expansion and comes to a stop before moving back toward him. The shockwave force of it contracts back, folding inward like origami before entering Kidd's body all at once. The young reaper fights for air as an energy he has never known settles into his muscles and weaves into his spine. He can feel it, coating his bones, liquid in his veins and marrow if he focuses on it.

He remembers the look in Liz's eyes as she held the gun form of her younger sister to the technician. He is positive that the only thing preventing her from pulling the trigger was his near-immediate utterance of her name. Even that had had not prevented her from pulling an arm back and punching the younger boy in the stomach.

When he says her name this time it is quiet. He sounds out of breath and her eyes scan over the profile of his face, searching for something. The young reaper blocks out soul perception because he already knows that Patty is running up the stairs, anxious, her soul battle ready and worried.

Kidd inhales a shallow pull of air.

"Kidd."

What Liz is not saying presses into him, snaking around his heart.

He forces himself to turn slightly, pivot and face her. He brings his eyes up from her left shoulder to look into cobalt blue and he finds her looking at the right side of his head. He already understands the blank shock in her face.

"I have gained a second sanzu line."

He breaths out the words.

The eldest weapon notices the young reaper's eyes flicker over he shoulder and land on the doorway where her sister stands frozen. Liz can feel her sibling pushing and pulling at resonance, trying to align the state of their souls. Patty is searching for the mechanism that would ensure them the slightest margin of normal. She is plundering through the eldest pistol's soul to see if they are all still okay. Upon finding nothing but confusion and dark respect Patty steps into the bathroom.

The clicking sound of Patty's footsteps pulls Kidd back into focus.

"Kidd."

Patty's voice is different.

"…Are you okay?"

Her voice isn't fear or judgment.

"Kidd…?"

The clicking stops and he feels the smaller, firmer hands of Patricia Thompson ghosting over the bruise around his eye.

"It is alright Kidd."

The young reaper bows his head a fraction, eyes already closed.

"We are here."

He cannot contain himself anymore.

He is already on his knees when he tugs open a resonance link and soul perception, eyes screwed shut as he cries and chokes on the force of their feedback in the link. Kidd is aware of the closeness of Patty, something he finds neither demanding or needy -the weapon is iron will and strength in this moment. Her hands are tracing his spine and tangled in his hair. He can hear her heartbeat and the sound causes him to search for Liz.

Reaching inside their resonance he finds her, slightly on edge and watchful. She is standing away from them, eyes trained on the smooth surface of the mirror. One fingertip is hovering over the surface. Kidd prods at her gently, worried and curious and still broken apart but mending. He needs her to say something.

She arches a brow before letting it fall back into place. Her face calm and blank as Kidd waits inside their link.

Her eyes shut and her hand drops to the countertop, head bowed she hears him laugh at her posture. It is hollow sounding and she flinches at his still shaken state.

"There will be a time when you believe everything is ending…"

Her voice is steel and liquid fire as it lights up their resonance, it echoes in reality as she whispers the words aloud.

"… and that will be the beginning."

…

…

Author note: If I had the patience to take on a huge (absolutely massive) writing project I would base it around this concept and quite possibly this piece. I had so much to think about as I tried working through the kinks and dialogue. As a whole, I am proud of this one and would still like to play around with it in the future. My only regret? That I did not get to work Patty into more of it.

I still have a few more ideas for chapters, so this collection isn't done.

I thank you for all of your patience with me.


	9. Chapter 9

Nothing In This World Is Strange.

(Title: Monitored.)

Author note: I do not own this.

…

…

Time is flickering to a stop and shuttering forward.

He glances a fraction to his left. Liz is there, staring forward with a sharp expression. He can feel the tension in her, bound tightly to her muscles and bones. Her hands are out of her pockets, fingertips brushing the thighs of her jeans as she inhales.

He glances to his right and a second passes with all the drawn out expanse of an hour. Under the yellow-white shine of hospital lighting Patty looks no better than her sister. Kidd can see the hollows under her eyes. He knows that her skin has never been this particular shade of pale. (Not even when he first caught sight of them in an alleyway. No, not even then.) There is worry and a fierce sense of protectiveness streaking across her soul. It is as bright as a nova.

They stand in the hallway, white tile under their shoes, the unbearable smell of bleach and copper and acid present in the air. Kidd tugs at the bottom of his suit jacket and notes that both siblings have again taken up sentinel closer to him than normal.

There are a few empty gurneys pressed up against the wall, the closest one to them catches his eye. He fixates on the glint of the metal and tries not to think about where they are. He can hear phones ringing. Nurses chatter and scrape pens across papers on clipboards. Monitors hum and beep. The muted television screen down the hallway blinks images, the national news station.

He isn't sure when he backed himself against the wall, but nobody has spared them so much as a glance. Between the adrenalin kicking around in his body and the light (it seems to reflect off of everything) Kidd finds himself trying to remember how to breath.

A nurse comes out of one of the glass walled rooms, Liz moves. The eldest weapon takes a half step forward, opening her mouth to call after the scrub clad nurse. Kidd isn't looking at Liz, his glances are ghosting over the doorway the nurse just exited. He had not bothered to ask which room the scythe technician was assigned. Patty had gently grasped his forearm after forging his name on the visitor sign in sheet, wordlessly guided him forward.

He assumed the siblings knew where they were going.

Liz doesn't take more than three steps from him before he senses Patty's soul brushing against his own and reaching out to her sibling's. The oldest weapon freezes mid-step and backtracks to Kidd's side without a sound. Time pauses for a few heartbeats as the young reaper recognizes their actions for what they are. Anxious paranoia.

Part of him is pleased that they are uneasy, he gains a measure of comfort knowing that they can be out of their element. He instantly regrets the thought, because he would never wish this stomach knotting residual fear on anyone.

The three of them do not speak as they hold conference, light strands of their resonance link broadcasting their thoughts as a young white-coated doctor glances at a chart out in the hall. Liz is apologizing in a steady stream of whispers that sweep around Kidd's soul like vapor. Kidd cannot deconstruct the way she is apologizing, it feels like a plea for forgiveness and a cold admission of sins wrapped up in a prayer. Patty keeps touching him, her soul sparking against his in resonance and somewhere outside of their link he realizes that her hand is on his elbow. The youngest weapon is assuring both herself and him, repeatedly and soundlessly mouthing that they are together again. He can feel her silently forming a hundred oaths swearing that they will never let him go.

The two siblings are smothering him with scraps of unorganized memories and thought. He picks out some of it, quiet moments Patty offers forward of breakfasts spent alone. Liz is showing him snapshots of Gallows mansion's front door. She is trying to explain to him how difficult it was to enter the house without him, or the knowledge of where he was. She tells him that Patty hadn't touched anything and then forces forward a blurry memory of the two of them trying to ease the front door closed as softly as they can. They had been fearful, careful. Gallows became a tomb, a memorial to maintain until he was returned to them.

Time has been steadily speeding forward, what feels like a week passing as they stand in the hospital hall. Kidd is absorbing everything from their resonance, even as flashes of his imprisonment leave blindingly white impressions against his eyelids. He is dazed, swaying on his feet as Patty tells him (a stream of specific emotion and a smattering of images cross the link between them) that they could almost feel his presence with them whenever they were in the house. The memory of something old and dark and all encompassing in it's emptiness mashes against his consciousness.

Kidd closes off their link, assembling temporary walls to hold back his memories from them. They will learn everything in time, he promises himself this. Liz snatches the words from him before the link completely fades, Kidd feels her swirl a question against his soul.

They fade back into the real world, Kidd feels out of sync with his body for a moment and flexes his fingers. The gritty brightness of the hospital causes both siblings to squint for a moment. Kidd steps forward and feels Patty's shoulder bump into his upper arm. He inhales as the two siblings fall into resonance again, wordlessly reaching for his soul to complete their circuit.

He connects to them shallowly, letting them feel the tenor of his emotions. He hold back his thoughts.

He is crossing the hallway, eyeing the name on the chart in front of him. It doesn't say "Albarn" or bear any of the Academy insignia, so he moves down the hall toward the next clipboard. Both Patty and Liz ignore the charts. The eldest pistol is looking back over her shoulder and the youngest has slid in front of him, keeping her head forward. Their anxiety and level of focus unsettles him to the point where he re-reads the name on a chart three times before he recognizes it as "Albarn." The simplistic image of a skull is stamped on the bottom left corner on the first page of the chart. Kidd slides the clipboard off of its hanger beside the door and hands it to Liz.

The eldest pistol doesn't spare the chart a second glance. She is too occupied keeping watch over the hallway. Her glance is fixed to the back of a nurse's sneakers as they vanish around a corner. She exhales, the hallway is empty for a few precious moments.

Patty is gently forcing the door open, white knuckling the handle as she tugs Liz across the threshold. Kidd slides inside and pivots to face the two siblings as the door clicks shut. One of Kidd's eyebrows is cocked upwards as he whispers a calm question across their link. Both siblings look suddenly tired as they try to explain, the resonance hums darkly when Liz mutters something about wanting to be left alone.

The volume in the room is suddenly turned on, the in-out of the scythe technician's breathing and the steady blip of her pulse across a screen feels a shade too loud. Soul shifts against the wall, his hand tightening against a cheap plastic cushioned chair, knuckles turning bone white.

Soul is speaking his name, nodding a fraction and setting his mouth into a grim line. Kidd catches the spooled tension wound tight at the edges of the weapon's tone. He can feel Liz glancing at the closed blinds with something that feels like approval and a curious fear. Across the room, behind the scythe technician's bed is a window with its blinds pulled open wide. Soul is looking at their trio with a gloomy respect.

Kidd shifts his weight from one hip to the other, finally stilling himself and swallowing back the dry patch in his throat. He lets his eyes set themselves on Maka. Patty is easing behind Kidd as he steps forward to the base of the technician's bed. Liz's voice registers in the young reaper's ears as she asks Soul why the blinds are shut. Kidd smirks a little as the red-eyed weapon replies. Soul hadn't wanted anyone bothering his technician.

The young reaper is thankful for the privacy. He feels a pang of homesickness, the seclusion of Gallows calling to him. Time slows and folds inward onto itself.

Maka looks smaller than she should, a frail assemblage of a body instead of the capable warrior he knows her to be. He feels her soul perception register the extra bodies in the room. It reminds him of spider silk floating along a light breeze. The scythe technician's mind stirs under the weight of morphine and broken ribs.

He knows that she wants to speak to him. Her soul is already pressing insistently into his own, asking for contact. Behind him Liz grimaces. She can feel the link become complicated.

The young reaper slides Maka's soul away from his own (Liz exhales, the link between them shifts back into place like a clock being wound) he guides her back into sleep.

Kidd freezes as time catches up to him, a rush of sound and the glint of light from the window off the metal framing of Maka's hospital bed. He stares at his hand, it is open and facing palm down, inches away from the soft cotton of the scythe technician's blankets.

He cannot remember how it got there.

The young reaper looks around quickly. Liz is perched beside the empty plastic chair, Patty stands next to the door and shifts her weight cautiously. Soul is quiet, eyeing the palm of Kidd's hand with a cold stare. He is shaking off the feeling of warm darkness and the memory of gopher's face, furious as he landed another blow to Kidd's ribs.

He pulls his hand back and tugs at the bottom of his jacket. The material felt dull and altogether not the same as he remembers it. Inside their resonance link he is greeted with images of the second floor master bathroom shower at Gallows mansion. He recognizes their effort, feeling the gritty fragments of rock in Liz's hair and the dust still clinging to Patty's arms and legs. He is grateful for their patience with him and quietly asks one more favor of them. They bring their attention to a broad point within the link, listening, waiting.

He inhales deeply. Inside the link he requests to stay a few moments more, he pleads for their patience and reverently swears that he will explain everything in time. Liz attunes herself to the last portion of his words and he feels her shudder with the understanding that there is so much between them now. So much space they need to fill, so much that could have happened to him.

Patty's anger at the thought of being him being harmed is violent, a nova that could set the world aflame without effort. She is crying her apologies, her blood signing with the need to destroy anyone who could have possibly harmed him. Their combined anger and agony fill up his lungs for a moment. He cannot breath without tasting their emotions in his mouth.

Kidd whispers that they are here now. Woven into the words is the silent plea for calm. Liz quiets herself, tuning down their resonance until her and Patty are dull voices in the back of his mind. He calmly reminds them that they are safe. He swings the focus of their joint attention to Maka's form on the bed. Time jolts forward and he pulls himself together.

Resonance is turned down, nothing more than a warm hum along Kidd's spine. He smirks shakily, glancing at Soul. The weapon has moved to stand on the left of his technician's bed and is looking at the young reaper with intensity. (Kidd is distantly aware that they are in this room because Soul allows it.) The weapon is exact movement and sharp lines, tuned into his technician. Protective.

Kidd inhales again.

Monitors are beeping out the scythe technician's steady pulse. Kidd is quiet when he looks at Maka's thin right collarbone. He breaths out a thank you. It is part prayer and part reverent offering, the sound makes Soul go still.

The red-eyed weapon is prodding for an explanation. He is already saying that anyone would go after Kidd, that comrades are not allowed to leave each other to rot in demonic literature. That in reality the pistol siblings would have gone after him alone, so in a way he and his technician were only providing back-up. Kidd arches a brow and the weapon is quiet.

He speaks suddenly and with all the composed calm of his birthright. He is speaking only to Maka's unconscious frame. Soul listens, waiting. Kidd tells the scythe technician that she had come across another grigori soul. He explains that the soul's owner was the least helpful and powerful of Noah's henchmen, and that he had been assigned to be Kidd's caretaker.

The young reaper continues, eyes glancing between Maka's jaw and the patch of blanket pinned down by her arm. He tells her he heard Noah issue the order to collect her. He is quieter when he tells the space between her fingers that he spent time worrying about her. He pries his eyes from her jaw line to glance at Soul.

It is difficult to tell time properly in the place where he was held. He tells Soul this and then clears his throat. He mutters a calm apology and then corrects himself, it was difficult, he says. Kidd catches Soul wince and reminds himself that he is no longer in that place. He smirks and looks back at the scythe technician.

Kidd tells her that he mocked the henchmen when he returned without her. He continues, directing his glance at the open window as he says he is proud of her, and that he expected her to properly handle her opponent, no matter whom it was that Noah sent. Soul is still, looking at the ground as Kidd speaks.

The young reaper's face becomes expressionless when he tells Maka that she had unknowingly saved her weapon's life by evading capture. Kidd's tone is matter-of-fact when he says that Soul would have been killed, as he was not wanted for Noah's collection. He hears Liz inhale hard at the words. The red-eyed scythe runs a hand through his hair quickly. His eyes are questioning when he finally meets Kidd's stare.

He glances back at the thin scythe technician, tugging on the cuffs of his jacket. The room is silent. The resonance link between himself and the two siblings is quiet and empty.

Kidd cannot explain anymore. Had she been awake, Maka would simply run her soul against his own. Instead he is left scrabbling for words, talking to a girl who cannot hear him while hiding from the world in a hospital room. His frustration sparks across the link and it is absorbed by Patty in a moment.

It is Liz who steps forward and shatters their chaotic moment of peace. Her heels click across the floor and she appears at the young reaper's side. A second later Patty makes the same movement, her arm brushing against Kidd's in a familiar way.

Time is lurching backwards and spinning around like a top. Kidd is not sure he can count the seconds since someone last spoke, has it been years? He is unaware of the day or the hour for a span of heartbeats. Patty calms him, wrapping him up in a semblance of order as she counts the hours, minutes and seconds since they reclaimed him from his prison.

He cannot bring himself to question her. There is something undeniable and strange in the way she knows exactly the moment they got him back.

The eldest pistol is feeling around Kidd's soul for the proper words. Her technician has lost the ability to finish his task. She can feel that there is more to say, not much more though. She reaches into him, across his being and gently takes the words he has to offer her. He protests, insisting deep within their resonance that the words are not enough. Liz knows there is a truth to his statement. Patty echoes her agreement deep in their link.

The siblings speak aloud in unison. Their voices have rarely harmonized outside of a resonance link and the effect is stunning, coldly graceful and pitch perfect. Soul is wide-eyed as they speak their technician's words. They owe her much, and she has their thanks.

Kidd does not know when he had stopped paying attention to sound but it hits him again. Liz is opening the door and Patty is easing him out into the hallway. The world beyond Maka's hospital bed is not nearly as quiet. It is less peaceful too, Kidd notes. Nurses are walking the halls for their rounds, doctors carry folders and syringes full of clear liquids. The wheels on a cart clatter and squeal somewhere out if sight. There are voices and the sound of a baby crying very distantly. A phone on the wall rings. The tile is scuffed underfoot.

He had aged a millennia inside that place. He had existed as nothing more than a thought, the spark of a life and the energy of a soul. For a time he had forgotten his body, had been forced to simply be without it. That sort of darkness had been warmth and light and chaos. In it he had found salvation and hell.

He had imagined their deaths, over and over. The deaths of everyone, the frozen empty landscape of the earth after he had his way and made it nothing. He had seen his ability, so far beyond that of his father. He had known that he could bring the world to its knees and re-define order and symmetry and chaos. All of this he found within himself. Within that blank warm nothing, that dark.

Kidd is unaware that he had stopped moving. Patty is behind him, her back nearly pressed into him as she tries to attune her soul with his for resonance. Liz stands in front of him, soul singing with sparks of anxious panic. Her eyes are gunmetal and sapphire. One of her hands is clasped around his shoulder.

He inhales sharply and she glances over his shoulder, checking for an enemy that is not there. He can hear it now, her words inside their link. She is telling Patty that it is alright, that they will be alright. Patty's streak of panic is as bright as her sibling's, screeching across their connection like a phoenix.

They make their way down another hallway, turning and sliding past a set of closed fire doors. Kidd is sure that they do not have clearance to be in this part of the hospital. Patty observes that there seems to be nobody around to say otherwise. Liz is keeping her end of the link relatively chatter-free and Kidd dives after her threads of thought and speech. He pauses mid-step when he hears the eldest weapon's thoughts.

She is calm, but Kidd can feel the residue of unease in her mind. She doesn't know what he is capable of right now. She is thankful that she has him back, terrified that he was locked in the bottom of the book, chained there by gods-only-know-what. She is scared that the all-forsaken thing could have hurt him, in ways and to extents she will never be able to heal. Not even with Patty's help.

Kidd looks at her, and while she does her best to stare forward and keep a firm grasp on his hand he spots the cracks in her perfect composure. Her mind races inside their link. Her thoughts have drifted to Maka's grigori soul and her ability to fight insanity while sleeping. Kidd winces as Liz wonders if the scythe technician can coax the young reaper back to sanity.

Patty has wandered from them, arms crossed and knees slightly bent. She faces away from them, looking down a wide hall. He can feel her focusing on the conversation inside the link.

Liz is pulling her hair into a ponytail, tugging harder than needed on her blonde strands. Resonance sparks with the edges of her thoughts. She isn't willing to move Maka into Gallows yet, they all require long showers and a quiet night away from everyone and everything else. She wants him to calm down at the sight of perfectly symmetrical art and the unparalleled state of spotlessness they have kept the kitchen in since his departure. She cannot protect him nearly as well when they are amid civilians, though should it become necessary she has no problem turning Patty into an arm cannon and blowing the hospital away. They need rest, even though she knows he has to see some sort of paranormal medical professional about the state of his ribs, some of them must be broken.

He waits as she apologizes, mentally re-arranging their schedule. She delays their going directly home in favor of visiting professor Stien. They are taking the stairwell fire escape as she debates the pros and cons of taking a cab to the Academy grounds. He smirks and almost laughs, instead it sounds more like a feline noise, reminding her that he has a magical flying skateboard. She diplomatically tells him to shut his shinigami word hole but agrees that flying skateboard is the best way to go.

Kidd's perception of time saunters around. He is in a daze when they ghost over the Academy's front stairs, the board tottering and unstable in the air. The young reaper brushes off the gentle push of Liz's soul, regretting the action as the black white emptiness soaks into his mind again.

He cannot shake off the memories.

Liz is transforming back, wrapping her arms around their technician and adjusting her stance on the board. Patty is sliding out of Kidd's unconscious grasp. Inside their patched-together resonance Kidd is mute. Patty is calling for her sibling's attention and Liz is reaching, knees shaking, for the familiar weight of Patty's weapon form.

Kidd's pinky catches on the trigger as Liz wraps her hand around the technician's and tries to move him into a more manageable position. Patty knows better than to fire, adding bullets to their impromptu landing would cause more harm than good. Still, the pull on her trigger sparks a response… and she fixates her attention on Kidd's soul.

For a very long moment their resonance link is bright silence.

They are fifteen feet above the hard stone of the Academy's pavilion. Liz's knees buckle as Patty begins to scream their technician's name. The sound of the younger weapon's voice is too loud, echoing off the abstract edges of their resonance. They collide with the stone and jumble into a heap. The darkness brightens as Patty blinks into human form. Then all is quiet.

They are on their way to the professor's office when Stein seems to materialize out of the shadows, uttering a quick sentence before turning on a heel. His coat billows like a sail behind him as he walks and Liz wonders if he normally moves this fast. She is trotting after him, the young reaper's weight against her back as Patty brings up the rear.

All the hallways feel the same as they follow the professor. Liz is trying to ignore the way the scrapes on her forearm and ribs sting. Patty is wound tight with tension, ready to switch back into pistol form and unleash a hail of bullets should any of the shadows in the hall turn into the creatures from that book. Or worse, should Stein turn around with scalpel in hand and a nasty gleam in his eye.

The siblings are edgy and a bit too exhausted looking when Stein finally comes to a stop in front of the door to the Death Room. He holds the massive wooden door open, hand pale against the black paint. Liz isn't in the mood for formalities and Patty understands enough to gently prod Stein forward and insist that he enters before them.

The professor isn't an idiot. He can feel the chaos in the link between the trio, but there is nothing he can do about it. When he clears the guillotine hallway and comes to a stop under the perfect blue of Death's sky he refuses to meet the reaper's glance.

At first the professor doesn't turn around, but he catches the way the eldest sibling hisses as she kneels on one knee to deposit Kidd's body on the floor. He spins around on the ball of one foot as Death passes by. The reaper is frozen in place for a heartbeat too long, expression blank.

Patty is standing, her eyes skimming across the room and knees slightly bent. Liz is on the ground. She hasn't moved to get up, one hand gripping Kidd's jacket lapel tightly. Neither of them move as Death approaches.

The professor stays where he is, a quiet observer to something he isn't sure he should be watching. Patty's lip curls back slightly and exposes her teeth. Liz exhales hard, finally taking her eyes off of the young reaper. She looks instead at the boy's father.

The eldest weapon's presence is commanding, even as she sets her jaw and gets to her feet… she exudes hellfire and ice. Stein observes, as soon as the older pistol stood up the younger sank into a low crouch. He can see the organic fluidity of their resonance with his own soul perception. They are still humming with adrenalin and a protectiveness that causes Stein to pause.

The sound of footsteps on tile pulls the professor's attention back into the present. Liz is walking toward Death. The look on her face still lethal, but slightly softened. For one insane second Stein thinks she is going to punch the grim reaper right in his mask. Her soul is bubbling with anger and bitter hostility.

"Something is wrong with his soul."

She grits out the words like they are poison.

Death slides around her, moving without the jaunt of actual steps. Patty growls, the sound is low and fierce as the cloaked reaper comes closer. Stein misses the exchange but he is sure that Liz must have ordered her sibling to stand down, because Patty goes silent a moment later.

Death glances over his shoulder, not at Liz, but at Stein. The message is abundantly clear. The man has overstayed his welcome. Death's voice is a monotone when he tells the professor that they can continue their conversation later. Stein cocks his head a touch to the left and nods.

His footsteps are quiet as he leaves.

The four are left alone under a perfect sky.

Liz can feel the tension in Patty's leg muscles as acutely as if they were her own. Their resonance link is a second skin, a unity. Patty breaths and automatically Liz matches the motion. When her eldest sister flexes the fingers of her right hand Patty feels the need to become metal and energy and soul.

"His soul -"

"I know that already."

The reaper isn't blinking, his monotone words hang over them.

Patty lays a palm gently over the center of Kidd's chest. His heartbeat is still there, fluttering underneath her hand. Liz catches shadows of the sensation.

Death hasn't moved. Time shutters to a standstill for the three of them.

And then Kidd gasps, the smallest of uneven exhales. Patty feels it as the air leaves him, Liz's eyes widening a fraction. There is tension in their technician's body, arching his spine and bowing his neck. The heels of his shoes scuff against the floor as his legs bend and kick outward.

Liz is spinning around as Patty begins pulling their resonance link open and pulling the young reaper into it. Her eyes are wide, calm and focused as she leans over Kidd's body and presses her forehead to his. Patty's eyes slide shut as her hand presses firmly against his breastbone.

The eldest pistol is frozen where she stands as Patty begins tearing at their memories. The inside of their resonance is a carefully executed mess, growing more complex and raw with each passing second. Patty is pressing memories and emotions into Liz, reaching for the darkest blurs of half hewn mental images and soaking the pair of them in every emotion she can reach.

Death glides forward. Has his son always looked so frail? Has the boy always appeared as human as he looks now? The reaper kneels, his cloak pooling and dissolving into trails of vapor. He can hear the youngest weapon breathing in time to Kidd's shallow pulls of air. He is close enough that he can reach out and touch them both, but Patty seems unaware of him.

Inside the sibling's resonance the axis of the world is shifting. They are raw, so hyper aware of every thing they have ever felt in the course of their entire lives that Liz is a heap on the floor. Her body refuses to hold her upright. Patty is still destroying everything, layering pain and hurt over impossible joy and so much violence. It is hard to breath. Gritting her teeth, Liz finds that Patty is somehow pushing air into their lungs.

The oldest weapon is trying to assemble a thought and finds herself scrabbling for words as they slide farther into abstract, indefinable tar pits of emotion. Her efforts are not in vain. In the same instant her perception of time is thrown forward and Patty murmurs a reassurance against her sibling's soul.

True peace lies between rage and serenity.

The epiphany is small but absolute. With the last scraps of her coherent mind Liz relives the moment she first saw Kidd wear his cloak.

Death is careful as he eases the limp body of Patricia Thompson off of his son. He can feel the resonance link running seamlessly between the three of them. It sparks and hums as Patty tumbles onto her back, one arm tangling itself around her torso.

He glances back, spotting Liz's frame sprawled across the floor. Death smirks in admiration. The siblings were still trying to repair the chaos in Kidd's soul. He expected no less of them.

Kidd gasps again, the siblings inhale to match him and Death hears the sound in stereo. He pauses, resisting the urge to shake Kidd's shoulders until the boy wakes. Death could almost swear that Kidd was sleeping, caught up in a bad dream.

Only that was not the case.

The reaper spreads his fingers out, hand hovering a half foot from Kidd's chest. He begins to focus his soul, seeking out the energy that could only belong to his son. It is simple to force resonance with the young reaper. Death can feel the imperfections of the link, like crooked seams in a garment. He can feel, distantly, the link strung out between Kidd and the two siblings.

Death sighs, pushing his mask up off of his face. His hands morph themselves back into what they had been, once upon a different time. He has the same yellow eyes and two bright streaks of white crowning his head. He presses one palm against the chest of the young reaper.

It is not a simple task. Death closes his eyes and stretches out his soul, feeling around for the familiar tinges of insanity and panic that lace his child's soul. The panic eases away quietly. Insanity stays rooted, sticking itself to all the memories Kidd has of his time inside Noah's book.

He tries pushing against it, overpowering it until it gives, only it doesn't. It simply moves into Patricia and Elizabeth. He slides himself away from Kidd's soul and the insanity returns, diving deeply into the soul of the weakest person in the resonance.

Death grimaces and calls the insanity forward, offering it power and feeling it slide across his own soul before he walls it in and blinds it. There is light and darkness in equal measure residing in the soul of Death. The light turns the madness, the insanity, into a burnt out shell of a thing. It smolders and crumbles to ashes before it fades into nothing.

Death rises to his feet and watches the shadowy hem of his cloak wind toward his son's figure. He smiles and pulls the mask back down over his face. His hands balloon back into white extremities.

Kidd wakes first, eyes snapping open and iris' blowing outward before settling back down to normal size. He rolls over, unsteady on all fours as he automatically reaches for Patty. Death feels Kidd reaching for the siblings across their resonance link.

"They will be alright."

Kidd is kneeling beside Patty, but he spares his father a short glance over his shoulder.

"What happened?"

Death doesn't answer, the clouds in the perfect blue sky have gone still.

"How much madness was in that book?"

Kidd's eyes fix on the floor beside Patty's shoulder.

Inside their link Kidd can feel Liz pulling herself back together, re-aligning her body and mind. He looks to her collapsed body and sees her ribs expand and contract evenly. Patty's soul is humming along, a dull yellow that grows brighter with each heartbeat.

He can feel them putting something important back together, organizing something between the three of them. Their resonance clicks and clatters along, warming and cooling sporadically.

"What did you do?"

Kidd stands and looks at the eyeholes in his father's mask.

Death cocks his head to the side slightly and clasps his hands behind his back.

"I brought you to order."

The young reaper narrows his eyes, confused.

"You altered my soul?"

Death can see the concern flickering across his son's face. The child is uneasy, scared for the safety of his partners.

"I removed the insanity that had unbalanced you."

"And?"

Death is caught off guard for a moment.

"And what?"

"Something else happened, why aren't they awake?"

It is only now that Death realizes Kidd has placed himself between his weapon partner and his father.

"They were attempting to repair your soul."

Kidd is only half listening to the reaper. He reaches inward and quietly searches for the siblings, they are there. They feel tired and dulled down, less intense than their souls normally feel. He gently asks if they are alright. Patty nods and Liz offers a slight smile. He can feel them prodding their soul's against his. Checking for damage and instability.

"…they did a good job of it too."

Death's voice is serious, flat and quiet.

The young reaper looks his father over. There is something stiff and formal about him. Kidd is curious, full of questions about the last several hours of his life. It feels like a blur, none of it comes to mind easily and what does feels surreal.

He doesn't have time for questions right now. Not when everything is so raw and wide-open. He inhales a breath and feels Patty's soul stir restlessly.

"Will you wake them?"Death nods a fraction at the request.

"Brother to sleep…"

Kidd's voice feels hollow as he speaks. Death doesn't laugh, instead he glides across the room to his mirror.

…

Author's note:

This one got away from me a little. There was so much I wanted to cover, and cover properly. (Forgive me for having Death remove his mask. I tried re-writing that moment, but I couldn't. It felt correct to do it that way.)

This collection has been going for over a year. I blame myself for that. I was going to end at eight chapters. Then there was another idea, a few more ideas here and there. This chapter alone clocks in at over five thousand six hundred words. I thank you all for your patience, though we are not quite done.


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